Word: scheldt
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Rundstedt Retreat. Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch, Breda, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom were the bolt positions in the German line from the Maas to the Scheldt estuary. All five had fallen this week without much of a fight. Allied airmen reported columns of German transports scuttling north to the rivers...
...Germans evidently feared being pinned against the Maas as they had been nailed against the Seine in France. They had an estimated 60,000 troops below the Maas, including the doomed and dwindling pockets on the Scheldt estuary. They were definitely in retreat. In contrast to the bitter stalemate fighting elsewhere on the western front, the British-Canadian forces made good time. Nevertheless the Germans retreated in good order. They needed time to get set between the Maas. the Waal and the Led. They had to hold the Arnhem hinge...
Antwerp, the greatest freight port on the continent of Europe (annual peacetime capacity: 23,500,000 tons), was capable of supplying all the Allied armies in the Low Countries, and it had been captured intact, six weeks ago. But it was useless so long as the Scheldt estuary, its outlet to the sea, was flanked by pockets of stubborn, German holdout troops. So the operation to clear the banks of the Scheldt had a triple-A priority...
Pocket Amphibians. But progress this way was slowed by bitter resistance. Another Canadian force knifed through the German pocket at its weakest point, and bisected it, reaching the Scheldt at Terneuzen. The design was to jump off from Terneuzen and land among the Germans downstream, creating a bridgehead within a bridgehead. Amphibious equipment could not be brought up the river, under the guns of German batteries at Breskens and Flushing, and had to be improvised on the spot...
...estimated numbers (some now prisoners) whom the Nazis left behind: Cherbourg 35,000; Saint-Malu 4,000; Brest 35,000; Lorient 10,000; Saint-Nazaire 10,000; Le Havre 9,000; Boulogne 7,000; Calais 10,000; Dunkirk 10,000; Mouth of the Scheldt...